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Watch 2012 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony

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We are saddened by the loss of Adam Yauch on May 4. He will be greatly missed, but his influential music career lives on.

About the Beastie Boys

At different times over the past three decades, the Beastie Boys have been shaven-head punks, hip-hop bad boys, Seventies-funk students, political activists and style icons. Most important: they have had one of the richest, most important careers in hip-hop and rock, introducing rap to a huge new audience and then pushing the frontiers of what a hip-hop group could do. Their 1986 debut album Licensed To Ill - a supremely bratty, hard-punching, pitch-perfect mix of rap and hard rock - was hip-hop's first number one album, and remains near the top of the Billboard catalog charts to this day. The single "(You Gotta) Fight For Your Right (To Party!)," became a teenage party anthem of the 1980's; a generation of hip-hop fans memorized hits like "Brass Monkey" and "Paul Revere," songs which are now part of the rap canon. Their follow-up, 1989's Paul's Boutique, was one of the high points of hip-hop's golden age of sampling, piling hilarious, streetwise rhymes over everything from Loggins & Messina to the Ramones. In the 1990's, they came full circle musically, picking up their instruments and bringing back hardcore punk and funk into their music repertoire. They recorded three classic albums, Check Your Head, Ill Communication and Hello Nasty, and smash hits like "Sabotage" and "Intergalactic." Along the way, they've kept experimenting with what a hip-hop band can be: becoming the most politically active group of their generation with the Tibetan Freedom Concerts; recording classic videos; putting their fans behind the camera with their film Awesome I F**king Shot That; and recording three new studio albums in the last decade, 2004's To The Five Boroughs, 2007's The Mix-Up and 2011's Hot Sauce Committee Part Two.

Watch 2012 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony

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